Catherine II, known as Catherine the Great, was born Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg on May 2, 1729 in Stettin, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland). Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, held the rank of a Prussian general and governed the city despite not being its actual prince. Her mother, Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp, was a minor princess related to royalty across Europe which helped elevate the family's status.
As a young girl, Sophie received an education focused on etiquette and discipline more than academic subjects. This prepared her for an arranged political marriage to further her family's ambitions. When Elizabeth of Russia became Empress in 1741, she began seeking a bride for her nephew and heir Peter. Elizabeth chose the 14-year-old Sophie to cement an alliance with Prussia and bring Lutheran blood into the Russian line.
Sophie traveled to Russia and converted to the Russian Orthodox faith, taking the name Catherine upon her wedding to Peter III in 1745. The union was difficult as Peter did not love Catherine and she found him an immature drunk. Over time Catherine cultivated relationships with Elizabeth's advisors and the imperial guards while continuing her self-education by reading works of philosophy and history. Her marriage produced one son, Paul, but Peter was likely not the biological father.
When Empress Elizabeth died in 1762, Peter ascended to the throne as Peter III but quickly proved an inept leader. Within months, Catherine conspired with her lover Grigory Orlov and other guards officers to overthrow him. They forced Peter to abdicate, then killed him, allowing Catherine to be proclaimed ruler that same year.
Over her 34-year reign, Catherine embraced the ideals of the Enlightenment as an "enlightened despot." She sought to impress Europe with Russia's cultural maturation while still asserting complete autocratic authority. Her policies focused on expanding Russia through military conquests and territorial settlements. Under Catherine, Russia gained more than 200,000 square miles by annexing Crimea, Belarus, Lithuania, and parts of Poland including eastern Poland and Danzig.
Catherine also undertook major domestic reforms to establish a more efficient administrative system. She issued the Charter to the Nobility and Charter to the Towns to give elite classes more political power and legal autonomy. She organized Russia into governorates and districts, codified a new legal code, and streamlined the bureaucracy. Catherine founded the first state-financed primary schools and opened secondary schools for women.
A lavish patron of the arts, Catherine embraced the Rococo style and renovated lavish Baroque palaces like the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. She wrote comedies, opera librettos and art criticism herself. An avid collector, she acquired thousands of paintings by old masters through agents across Europe. Her art advisors helped shape the evolution of Russian art through purchases and by founding one of the largest art museums in the world, the State Hermitage Museum.
In foreign policy, Catherine's reign shifted the balance of power across Europe as Russia became a key player in continental affairs. Her first major military success came in 1768-74 in the Russo-Turkish War. Russia gained control of the North coast of the Black Sea and dispatched naval squadrons into the Mediterranean for the first time. This checked Ottoman power and made Russia the dominant force remaking the map of Southeastern Europe over the next century.
Catherine also spearheaded the First Partition of Poland in 1772 in partnership with Prussia and Austria. This annexed large Polish territories, including the unitary Polish state's western provinces. Combined with two further Partitions in 1793 and 1795, the once vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist as an independent geopolitical entity until the 20th century. Russia's brutal suppression of Polish nationalist uprisings throughout Catherine's reign caused lasting bitterness between the two ethnic groups.
In addition to national security concerns, Catherine sought to expand trade by securing Russia's southern frontier against nomadic assaults and establishing new port settlements around the Caspian and Black Sea basins. She founded numerous cities and naval bases including Sevastopol, Kherson, Nikolayevsk, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk in newly conquered lands. Their trade access allowed greater exploitation of Ukraine's agricultural and coal resources.
Within central Russia, Catherine also promoted immigration and resettlement of Russian peasants along the Volga River basin and in areas east towards Siberia. The abundance of land grants she bestowed helped cement Russia's hold over the region while the rise in agricultural productivity improved tax revenues. Many towns like Yekaterinburg still bear her name today as testament to her colonization policies.
Domestically, Catherine faced major uprisings that threatened her rule. In 1773, a group of armed Cossacks rebelled demanding old privileges and protesting harsh living conditions. The revolt was crushed ruthlessly with their leader Oryna Grievich publicly executed. Then in the largest peasant uprising in Russia's history, a group inspired by a Cossack named Yemelyan Pugachev led close to 300,000 people against serfdom and high taxation between 1773-75. They managed to control a large region of the Volga basin for over a year before imperial troops recaptured the territory and executed all rebel leaders.
While presenting herself as an enlightened philosopher queen, Catherine's actions towards the serfs was often severe and uncompromising. Over time she granted more privileges to the nobility at the expense of peasants in order to ensure their support against new unrest. This worsened overall living conditions in the countryside leading to lower agricultural yields. When noble mismanagement led to localized crop failures and famine outbreaks, Catherine decreed firm prohibitions against peasants migrating from their land. This trapped rural laborers in a declining socioeconomic system for over a century until reforms were finally enacted.
In her last years Catherine became quite corpulent and suffered from gout and arthritis. She took on a parade of younger lovers drawn from the ranks of the handsome imperial guards. None could rival the place in her heart held by Grigory Potemkin, the great military leader who perhaps did more than any other in actualizing her bold conquests of the Black Sea coast and suppression of troublesome Cossack clans. After a stroke ended her life on November 17, 1796 at age 67, Catherine was succeeded by her son Paul I.
